Ghoti and Chips

Yes, indeedy. We did have ghoti and chips at Thursday night's quiz (and am fully aware that not one but two days have now passed since the explanation was expected). Well, I had to have chicken, because some great thieving soul took what they hadn't ordered. As clever readers may have surmised at this point, ghoti does indeed sound like fish, if you consider the following:

• the gh that is in enough
• the o that is in women
• the ti that is in nation

This gives us f-i-sh. This example in support of spelling reform is generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but Wikipedia disputes this.

Many impressed nods and offers of coffee to Katharine for her submission for the phonemic task of Thursday as well. Here is another little game to impress friends at parties: How many different pronunciations are there for -ough?

So, we totally lost at quiz night. But we had an absolutely grand time! Our team was quite international, which could have had something to do with our low score -- Maurizio, Steffi, Alex, Diana, her mom Claudia (visiting from Columbia, if I haven't mentioned that before), Eamonn and moi. Due in part to my amazing (although I could stand some improvement) animation awareness, we were the only team to get 10 out of 10 on the 'Identify the Famous Rabbits' section -- I had to argue quite vociferously in favor of The Energizer Bunny (not the Duracell Bunny) and of Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. Claudia and Diana thought it was great fun, even though the English was being spoken at rather too high a rate of speed and so they had no idea what the questions were. They especially like the fiesty little old ladies, who were present in abundance.

Back to the initial topic of ghoti, Jasper and Carrot are well on their way to becoming 'top drawer' snobby fish. They have moved up in the world to a new penthouse tank, which E sensibly recommended and helped me to buy since a) they still have not died and b) the water problem was becoming quite stressful. Online yesterday, I read that goldfish are not supposed to be kept in bowls, actually... They were transplanted last night and are really funny swimming around in about three times the volume of water as they had before. I think the comment was, 'Your fish are on crack.' Sometimes a piece of food gets caught in the downdraft of water flow and Jasper goes speedily chasing it in a nosedive to the bottom :) Think shall have to get more snails as there is only one left, due to my cleaning efforts, no doubt and the fact that you just forget that snails are there since their personalities are so subdued. To make up for this fact, I became a victim of marketing and got a Gary the Snail to make up for this species lack.

Still on topic (because I am known for my ability to stay on topic and focussed), saw no fish (or sharks) washed up on the beach yesterday. There were ducks in the water; who knew that ducks swam in the ocean? Yes, we went again. YAY!!!!!! But yesterday, went to a new part of the same beach which is in Porthkerry Park. The part where we got to the beach is close to the viaduct train bridge, on around towards the side where the airport is. The park itself is really big and the beach is only a small part of it. Lots of people had brought their dogs out, even though it was a rubbish misty day yesterday. It was also slightly chilly, as you may see on pics in flickr (which shall be linked here in a couple of hours since, yet again Blogger Photo is rebelling).

This part of the beach is also pebble (aka, large rocks which can be hazardous and slide if you are going either down or up hill from the beach. This though seems to be funny if noone gets hurt and gives other people things to do like make noises of stupidity at the sliding, flailing person.). The sandy part is much more narrow than the other part of the beach we have visited before (although the tide was coming in) and there are more of the flat rock surface under and instead of sand. This flat rock surface is really coolly carved out, presumably from centuries of water. Although, i suppose i could be wrong. Not only is it carved into what looks like purposefully-laid stones, but there are carvings in layers as well, which makes handy steps for clambering up and down large outcrops, between which waves are coming in and making plumes into the air. It is really challenging to catch a wave plume with a camera when this camera thinks before it snaps.

Now to format these pictures and get stuff on Flickr. Have pics from Norwich as well, so perhaps next blog should be a description of Norwich...